TRACING OUR ANCESTORS #14
Chapter XI.
THE ANGLO-SAXONS
ANCIENT ISRAEL DESTROYED
Ever since the reign of Jeroboam, Israel had rejected
Jehovah and worshipped Baal and the Golden Calf; and the
retribution was not long in coming. Like all other nations that
have defied God, Israel also had to pay for their folly, although
they did not know the why and the wherefore of their punishment;
neither does Israel of today, Great Britain and the United
States, realize the cause of their depression. Natural reactions
have their cause in spiritual neglect; for every bad deed there
is a punishment, just as the depression of today had its source
in the spiritual decay of our age; but our nation does not seem
to grasp that yet. So also did natural enemies like Assyria arise
to carry out the Divine judgment upon a Godless people.
BETH-SAK - HOUSE OF ISAAC
As early as the reign of Ahab and Jehu, kings of Israel, we
read:
"In those days the Lord began to cut Israel short: and Hazael
smote them in the coasts of Israel; from Jordan eastward, all the
land of Gilead, the Gadites, and the Reubenites, and the
Manassites, from Aroer, which is by the river Arnon, even Gilead
and Bashan." - 2 Kings 10: 32-33.
From these words we may take it that it was during this
period, about 900 to 800 B.C., that the disintegration of the
Kingdom of Israel or the Beth-Sak, commenced; Beth-Sak is the
Phoenician name for "The House of Isaac." The prophet Amos also
calls them by the same name in chapter 7, verse 16. Likewise, it
is of great interest and importance to us that on the Armarna
Tablets the Habiru, Habiri, or Abiri, who conquered Palestine
under Abdasherah or Joshua are also named the Saga or Saka men.
(Refer to "The Oldest Letters in the World" by Bristowe, page
32). Thus, it appears that Israel was their Bibical name only,
while their heathen neighbors and enemies spoke of them as Habiru
or H'Abiri, and Saga or Sakai, sons of Sac or Isaac; that is one
of the reasons why they were so easily lost to later historians.
The real captivity of the Beth-Sak began in 745 when
Tiglath-Pileser came and took large portions of the tribes of
Asher, Zebulun, Issachar, and Gad into Assyria, as recorded in
2 Kings 15:29. Now, there are many people who believe that Israel
should be looked for in the East in the same place where they
were lost. Those good people do not realize that it all depends
upon whether the thing we lose has legs or not. If we have lost a
knife or any other object, it is more than likely that the object
is still where we dropped it, but if we have lost a dog, for
instance, or a boy, at a certain spot, the chances are that he
will move away from there. And so it was with the Lost Tribes;
they were a lively bunch, always "gadding about" and venturesome,
ever pushing forward towards the setting Sun like all the
Hebrew-Phoenicians. The empire of Assyria was at the height of
its power at the time it invaded Palestine, but rapidly declined
after 185,Q00 of its soldiers perished in the siege of Jerusalem,
as recorded in 2 Kings 19:35; and with its ending the fortunes
of the Sak-Geloths, the prisoners of Isaac, naturally changed,
for, according to Prophecy, the eye of Jehovah was watching over
them.
"Behold, the eyes of the Lord God are upon the sinful
kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the face of the earth;
saving that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, saith
the Lord. For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of
Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet
shall not the least grain fall upon the earth." - Amos 9: 8-9.
In 720 B.C. Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, invaded Israel and
laid siege to its capital, Samaria, which fell after three years
in 717 B.C. to Sargon II, successor to Shalmaneser. The account
of this siege is given in 2 Kings 17: 5-6 and 18: 11:
"And the king of Assyria did carry away Israel into Assyria, and
put them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the
cities of the Medes."
A record of this Fall of Samaria was found written on
the walls of the palace of Sargon II at Nineveh, which reads: "In
the beginning of my reign I besieged, I took by the help of the
god Shamash ... the city of Samaria. Twenty-seven thousand two
hundred and eighty of its inhabitants I carried away ... I took
them to Assyria and put into places people whom my hands had
conquered. I set my officers and governors over them, and laid on
them a tribute as on the Assyrians."
It was the Assyrian custom to take the inhabitants of a
country and exchange them with those of another conquered
territory. According to the Bible record, the Sak-Geloths, or
prisoners of Isaac, were taken to the river Gozan and into the
cities of the Medes. Prof. Hannay identifies the Gozan with the
Uzen river that flows northward through the land of ancient Media
into the Caspian Sea. The location of Israel's banishment was
therefore four hundred miles east of Nineveh and formed one of
the outlying districts of the empire to which Israel was expected
to pay tribute; but otherwise they were little molested. Prof
Hannaay believes that over three million Israelites were taken in
all to Assyria, but this is probably exaggerated. We must also
bear in mind that before Assyria could invade Israel they had to
go through and overcome the Hittite empire, which came to an end
four years after Samaria, after Carshemish was taken in 714 B.C.
As perhaps half of the population of the Hittites, the Catti,
were
Israelites, we can readly see that a large number of Israelites
went into Assyrian captivity and into the land of the Medes south
of the Caspian Sea.
Living there semi-independently for the next hundred years,
those Saks or Saki, as they appear on various eastern
inscriptions, like the Behistun Rock, became the predominating
element in Media, just as their ancestors had been in Phoenicia.
They, in fact, were the leaders in the Medic wars of rebellion,
first against Assyria and later against Babylon. For a period, it
seems, the Saks passed under the name of Manda, a title derived
from one of their chieftains, and modern historians such as Prof.
Sayce believe now that it was of those Manda or Saki that
Cyaxares was king. It was they who under Cyaxares joined with the
Babylonians under Nabopolassar, marched against Nineveh in 606
B.C., and destroyed it after a two years siege, when the last Zar
of Assyria, AshurEtililani, determined to perish in the flames of
his capital and made a funeral pyre of his court.
It was here that the people of Israel began to fulfil their
Divine Destiny as God's Battle Axe, as we read in Jeremiah 51:
20-21:
"Thou art my battle axe and weapons of war: for with thee will I
break in pieces the nations, and with thee will I destroy
kingdoms; and with thee will I break in pieces the horse and his
rider; and with thee will I break in pieces the chariot and his
rider."
The power of Assyria had been the chosen medium to take
Israel into captivity, but only a century later that power was
destroyed by the sons of the prisoners they took into captivity.
AFTER ASSYRIA FELL
After the Fall of Asshur the Saks or Saki became the
dominant power in that region and, let it be noted, at the very
time that the kingdom of Judah ended in Palestine and went into
Babylonian captivity. About that time a large host of the Saks
moved northward across the Araxes River and through the Caucasus
Mountains into Southern Russia, where they became known as the
Scythians, the Latin term for the Greek word Skuthai for
Sak-Geloth, meaning the "prisoners of Sak." Some writers also
speak of them as the Skolotoi.
ISRAEL IN ASIA AND INDIA
BEFORE WE FOLLOW THE sAKS INTO EUROPE, LET US DEVOTE A FEW
PAGES TO THOSE OF THEIR BRETHREN WHO REMAINED IN MEDIA. Prof.
Waddell in his map of Eastern Asia gives western Media as the
home of the Guti or Catti, which name we have seen is a
derivation of Gadil or Gad, and therefore either men of God or
Judah or both, as we have seen before. These Guti or Catti
amalgamated with the Saks, and together they formed the backbone
of the growing power of Media. From a cylinder bearing the name
of Cyrus we learn that Gobryas, General of the Guti in the army
of Cyrus, came against Babylon and took it in 536 B.C. This was
that memorable destruction of Babylon on the night of
Belshazzar's feast, as told in the fifth chapter of Daniel. Here
again Israel played their predestined roles as God's
battle axe. In the words of Jeremiah 51:24-25, 28-29:
"And I will render unto Babylon and to all the inhabitants of
Chaldea all their evil that they have done in Zion in your sight,
saith the Lord. Behold, I am against thee, O destroying mountain,
saith the Lord, which destroyest all the earth: and I will
stretch out mine hand upon thee, and roll thee down from the
rocks, and will make thee a burnt mountain ... Prepare against
her the nations with the kings of the Medes, the captains
thereof, and all the rulers thereof, and all the land of his
dominion. And the land shall tremble and sorrow: for every
purpose of the Lord shall be performed against Babylon, to make
the land of Babylon a desolation without an inhabitant."
For many years Orientalists could find no trace of this
Babylonian Belshazzar and discredited the story of Belshazar's
feast, until Sir Henry Rawlinson found an inscription at Ur
asserting that "near the end of his reign Nabomdus (the last king
of Babylon) associated Belsharsizzar his eldest son with him on
the throne."
Daniel 5:31 states that Darius the Mede took Babylon. This
Darius is also a mysterious figure, as Cyrus was king of
Medo-Persia when Babylon was taken, the word Darius being merely
a title, meaning lord or governor. Cyrus was succeeded by
Cambyses in 529 B.C., and the latter was succeeded by Darius
Hystaspes in 521 B.C. He was the king during whose reign the
Temple was rebuilt, as told in the first chapter of Haggai. Even
the Scofield Bible questions who this Darius is who took Babylon
and suggests that he is Gobryas. If he is, then he as chief of
the Guti was an Israelite, who as general for Cyrus ended the
power of Babylon.
It appears, however, that Cyrus himself was defeated and
killed by the Saki in 529 B.C. Herodotus and Diodorus tell us
that Cyrus was killed by the Massagetai, under their queen
Tomyris on the Jaxartes river. Another prominent name attached
itself to lost Israel, that of Getai, which is the Medic form of
Guti or Catti, and likewise means "wanderers," or "adventurers,"
and indeed such they were, wandering over Eastern Asia for
centuries and later into Europe. Massagetai, means, according to
Prof. George Rawlinson, "Great Wanderers." and it was they who
defeated Cyrus the Great when he attempted to invade their
territory on the Jaxartes river east of the Oxus. Herodotus in
stating that the Massagetai lived on the Araxes is mistaken about
the river's location and means the Jaxartes.
Just as the history of Greece or Hellas begins with a
mythical age, so also has the history of Persia its mythical
beginning.
The early Persian literature of the Zend Avesta is full of
traditions of an heroic age with noble deeds and old-time
chivalry. Accurate Persian history dates back to Alexander the
Great, but previous to that legendary history goes back to the
heroes of the Asa or Anglai and the Saki in the mythical stories
of the Zend Avesta, all of whom were our friends the people of
Israel, who, beginning about 700 B.C., had spread themselves over
that territory between the Caspian Sea, the Hindu Kush, and the
Persian Gulf, and even as far north as the Jaxartes river, where
they founded Samarkand, meaning "New Samaria."
This was the period of Zoroaster or Zarathustra, who was
undoubtedly a Catti or Israelite and who introduced the Bel-fire
worship of the Catti from the Phoenician homeland into Ariana,
the Persia of later days. Zoroaster taught the existence of one
God, the creator of all things, to whom all things belong.
Zoroaster's faith was a religion of righteousness or "Asha," from
which is derived the word Asia. Like the Phoenicians, he and his
followers worshipped God through His visible symbol, the Sun,
from which the Parsee religion developed which still survives in
India until today.
The language of these Saki of Zoroaster's time was the
ancient Zend in which the Avesta, the ancient lore, is written,
as well as the Gathas or sacred hymns. As the Saki were
Phoenicians, so also was their language, the Zend, a variation of
it, which probably had survived in this district from the time
that the earliest Aryans or Adamites came down from the mountains
of the Hindu Kush 1800 years before.
It was at this period, 700-600 B.C., that the Runic
characters developed from the Phoenician script, which characters
we find engraved in that region as far east as Lake Aral, where
the Massagetai lived, and all across Russia to northern Germany,
Scandinavia, England, and Iceland. In those Runic characters the
Sagas of the Saghs and Goths were written, the Gathas of
Zoroaster and the Eddas of the Norsemen, which again are derived
from the earlier Vedas of the Indo-Aryans. All of these ancient
Sagas, though considered today only as fictitious literature
contain the legendary lore of the heroes of ancient times, who
were the forefathers of the Goths and the Scythians, the Getai or
Guti of Tyrkland or Turkestan, and the Saks of Sakland, south of
the Caucasus. There in that region south of the Caspian Sea was
the cradle of the so-called Nordic races, and there also the
cemetery of ancient Israel. Where Israel disappeared from
the pages of history the Anglo-Saxons and the Goths were born.
THE ORIGIN OF BUDDHISM
An investigation into the origin of the Buddhist religion
will
show that it originated about 500 B.C. in the mountains of
northern India among a people called the Sakyas. The name of
Buddha himself is associated with that of Sakya. It is an open
question whether a man by the name of Buddha ever existed. Some
even associate him with the Odin of the Goths or with Thoth.
Scholars believe that Buddhism is survival of the early Sun cult
of the Aryans. As the word Budda is derived from the Sanskrit
root budh, "to know" or "to awake," it expresses therefore the
type of religion or philosophy that Buddhism is. What is of chief
interest to us, however, is that the Sakyas of northern India,
the people who were the originators of Buddhism, were a branch of
our friends the Saki, Saghs, or Asa of Ariana, who had crossed
into northern India.
STANDARD SIGN OF THE SAKI
Our frontispiece shows a reproduction of a rock carving,
near the city of Bhopal in India, known as the "Topez of the
Sachi," dating from the fourth century B.C. (Taken from British
History Traced, by Roberts). Not only the name of Saki but also
the picture itself is of great interest to us. Below we see a
Lion and a Unicorn, which are the emblems of the whole house of
Israel, the Lion of Judah, and the Unicorn the calf or Engle of
the separated kingdom of northern Israel. Both figures are still
on the British Coat of Arms. In the center we see the shield of
Britannia, or the Brits or Covenant race, together with two
tridents, the same as that held by Britannia on our Plate VI. On
one side hangs a double flag with the crosses of St.Andrew and on
the other a starry banner. Of all the ancient stone carvings this
is the most striking and of the greatest importance to us, for in
it we can see that the original pattern for the Union Jack and
the Star Spangled Banner was in the minds of our ancestors
twenty-three centuries ago and probably before that, not only in
Europe but in distant Asia.
THE SAKI AND ALEXANDER THE GREAT
The Saki again are mentioned on the Behistun Rock
inscription, whereon Darius the Great boasts that he had taken
some of them as prisoners (about 500 B.C.). One of the Saki,
shown on the stone carving, by the name of Sakunka wears the
typical conical cap of the Goths or Scyths. As Darius was at that
period ruler of the whole Medo-Persian empire, extending from the
Mediterranean to the Indus, the Saks were of course citizens of
his empire and continued so until two centuries later, when
Alexander the Great invaded Persia. It was the Saks, the Getai,
and the Skuths who gave him more trouble than any of the other
people he had encountered, and during his invasion many of them
left their eastern homes and trekked around the Caspian Sea to
join their kinsmen, the European Scythians.
PARTHIA
After the battle of Ipsus in 301 B.C. the whole of Persia
fell under the sway of Seleucus, and when his kingdom broke up
fifty years later there arose a new power, Parthia, whose very
name, identical to Parthy, Prat, or Brat indicates that its
people were of the Covenant race of Ismel the Saki (Refer to
Prof. Waddell's explanation of the variant spellings of Brit,
Brat, or Prat in Chapter V). The Parthian revolt against the
Greeks was headed by Arsakes, whose name, meaning "the ruling
Sak," again proves who the leading element of Parthia were. It
must be explained here that not all of the people of Ariana in
those days were Saki; no indeed, the main population of that
country was Hamitic and also Sarmatians of Japhetic strain and in
the most eastern sections were even some Turanian or Mongolian
people. But it was the Saks who started what civilization that
part of the world enjoyed, as they have likewise carried
civilization to every other country. The Parthians were renowned
as horsemen and archers. They were clad in mail, by which their
steeds were also protected. Their military tactics were
proverbial. For almost three centuries the Parthian power
extended its sway, even into Syria, where they defeated a Roman
army; but after 50 A.D. their power declined, for the good reason
that the Saghs who had been the backbone of the nation departed
and followed their kinsmen into Europe.
Since 600 B.C. these wanderings of Israel into Europe had
been in progress. After the fall of Nineveh in 606 the parent
stock of the Saks left their homes in Sakland and departed for
Arsareh, taking the plunder of Nineveh with them. It is evidently
this exodus that is spoken of in 2 Esdras 13:39-46:
"And whereas thou sawest that he gathered another peaceable
multitude unto him; those are the Ten Tribes, which were carried
away prisoners out of their own land in the time of Osea the
King, whom Salmanasar the King of Assyria led away captive, and
he carried them over the waters, and so came they into another
land. But they took this counsel among themselves, that they
would leave the multitude of the heathen, and go into a further
country, where never mankind dwelt, that they might there keep
their statutes, which they never kept in their own land. And they
entered into Euphrates by the narrow passage of the river ... For
through that country there was a great way to go, namely, of a
year and a half; and the same region is called Arsareth. Then
dwelt they there till the latter time."
THE SAKI MIGRATE
Starting from their homeland in Sakland, between the present
Tabriz anD tHe Caspian, they crossed the Araxes river and through
a pass in the Caucasus migrated into the steppes of Southern
Russia, moving west ward along the shores of the Black Sea as far
as the Carpathian mountains. From these mountains flows a river
named Sereth, mentioned by Esdras, Ar meaning river. This Sereth,
like the Pruth, is a tributary of the Danube. The name Pruth is
another variant of the Prat or Barat name of Israel. There in the
present countries of Moldavia and Bessarabia they came into
conflict with the Cimmerians, an earlier flock of Israel,
mentioned in the previous chapter, whom they drove westward into
the present Germany. As the name of Scyth or Skuth is derived
from Sak Geloth, it appears that it was they who gave Scythia its
name Pliny says: "The Sakai were among the most distinguished
people of Scythia, who settled in Armenia and were called
Sacca-sani." Diodorus Siculus, the Greek historian of the time of
Caesar wrote of them: "The Scythians, formerly an inconsiderable
few, possessed a narrow strip on the Araxes, but by degrees they
became powerful in numbers and in courage."
THE AGE OF THE SAKI NATION
A reading of the fourth book of Herodotus makes it clear
that the people of Scythia were by no means of one and the same
race. Some of them were agriculturists and civilized, while
others were Slavic and even Turanian nomads and savages. He says,
for instance: "The Sakai, who were Skuths, had on their heads
caps, which came to a point and stood erect; they also wore loose
trousers and carried bows, daggers, and battle axes ... These
Amyrgian Skuths are called Sakai."
The Scythians told Herodotus that their nation had been in
existence for a thousand years previous to the invasion of
Darius. If we date, therefore, a thousand years backwards from
the time of Darius, 515 B.C., we arrive at 1485 B.C., the date of
the Exodus, when Israel was founded. This referred to what
Herodotus called the Royal Scythians, who considered the other
tribes in the light of slaves.
These lived on the Gerrhus, a tributary of the present
Dniester. Herodotus includes among the Scythian tribes the Getae,
who lived on the shores of the Danube, i.e., the Arsareth of
Esdras. Getae, we have already seen, means merely "wanderers,"
and such the Saki were. Those Getae, as Herodotus tells us,
believed in their immortality, going after their death to
Zalmoxis, which means nothing less than the "God of Moses." So
also was the country where the Getae lived named Moesia, for in
it lived the "people of Moses.
SAKI IN SOUTHERN RUSSIA
Many tumuli have been found in Southern Russia, some of
whose interiors were built of white marble. In these were found
chariots, pottery, jewelry, bracelets, gold, and precious stones
of the finest work manship and greatest abundance. The finest of
those tumuli is that of Solokha in the Crimea, which served as a
mausoleum for the Scythian kings for several centuries. This tomb
contained magnificent furnishings of silver and gold. One of the
royal skeletons found in it wore a heavy golden necklace with
lion headed ends. Couching lions are also very prominent on the
exquisite repousse work of solid gold, adorning the walls and on
the various gold and silver ornaments found, as well as on the
handles and sheaths of the swords, which themselves were made of
fine steel. The repousse relief work pictured mostly battle and
hunting scenes, on which the warriors appear in chain mail coats.
It is also noteworthy that they are not bare-legged like the
Greeks of that period were, but are wearing trousers.
All the ornamental design is of most unusual excellence.
Descriptions of this tomb which dates of the fourth century B.C.
are found in the "American Journal of Archaeology" of 1914, Vol.
XVIII, and in the "Illustrated London News" of January 3 and
February 14, 1914.
Prof Hannay refers to a Hebrew manuscript found in one of
those tumuli, which reads: "I am Jehudi, the son of Moses, the
son of Jehudi the Mighty, a man of the tribe of Naphtali, which
was carried captive with the other tribes of Israel, by the
Prince Shalmaneser, from Samaria during the reign of Hoshea, King
of Israel. They were carried to Halah, to Habor - which is Cabul
- to Gozan and to the Chersonesus - which is the Crimea." This
confirms the story of these wanderers or Scyths, the people of
Israel, who were taken to the river Gozan, the identical story to
that found in 2 Kings, but it also tells us of the later
wanderings to the Crimea.
SAKI IN CRIMEA
In the Crimea have also been found numerous ancient
cemeteries with Hebrew-Phoenician inscriptions on their
tombstones; seven hundred of them have been deciphered by Prof.
Chwolsen of Petrograd. Our Plate XXI gives us a photograph of one
of them, but it will be noticed that the script is not the square
Hebrew but marks a transition from the Phoenician characters to
the later Hebrew. The inscription as translated reads:
This is the tombstone of Buki, the son of Itchak the priest; may
his rest be in Eden, at the time of the salvation of Israel. In
the year 702 of the years of our exile."
If we date the exile from the Fall of Samaria in 717 B.C.,
then the 702nd year of the Exile would be 15 B.C.
Another inscription reads:
"To one of the faithful in Israel, Abraham ben Mar-Sinchah of
Kertch, in the year of our exile 1682, when the envoys of the
Prince of Rosh Meschek came from Kiou to our master Chazar Prince
David, Halmah, Habor and Gozan, to which place Tiglath Pileser
had exiled the sons of Reuben and Gad, and the half tribe of
Manasseh, and permitted to settle there, and from which they have
been scattered through the entire coast, even as far as China."
This again corroborates our story of the wanderings of
Israel, the Saki. But the dating of 1682 years for the exile must
refer to the founding of the nation at the time of the Exodus,
1486 B.C., which would fix the date of the tombstone at 197
A.D.
SAKI BECOME SAXONS
It is very strange that when all those inscriptions are
there, telling of the sojourning of Israelites in Southern
Russia, that scholars have paid no attention to them; but we may
assume the main season for this neglect is that, as the Jews have
passed for Israel, the scholars have assumed that those early
Israelites were the ancestors of the Russian Jews. As the Russian
Jews are descended from the Jews driven out of Spain five
centuries ago, there is no connection between the present Jews of
Russia and those early Israelites, whom the ancient writers call
Sakasuni, Saki, Guti, Getai, Sak-Geloths, Skuthia, Skoloti, and
scythians. Ptolemy mentions a Scythian race sprung from Sakai,
called Saxons. They came, he said, from the country of the Medes.
Aeschylus, the Greek poet, tells us: "The sacae were noted for
good laws, and were preeminently a righteous people." Albinus
said: "The Saxons were descended from the ancient Sacae of Asia,
and that in process of time they came to be called Saxons."
SAKI BARBARIANS?
On the other hand, modem historians and every Encyclopedia
state that the Scythians were uncivilized barbarians, using as
drinking cups the skulls of their slain enemies. Such indeed most
of them were, as Herodotus tells us; yet the contents of the
tumuli of Southern Russia, and particularly those of the royal
tumulus of Solokha, prove by the ingenuity and workmanship of
carvings in marble, silver, and gold that their builders were
something more than savages. If it is true that the Scytbians
left no ruins of cities behind them to tell of their existence,
it must be remembered first that they were mostly agriculturists
and second that such cities would have been levelled to the
ground by the dreadful invasions of the Huns and other Turanian
peoples that swept over Russia for centuries.
THE GOTHS
When, about 330 B.C., Alexander the Great had conquered
Macedonia and advanced northwards into the lands of the Danube,
where the Getae dwelt, the latter evaded him and moved northwards
across Europe to the shores of the Baltic; and it is there that
Pytheas of Marseilles found them in the third century B.C. and
called them Gutones. They called themselves Guta-thiuda, meaning
"people of the Goths." Thus, by their name of Guta they prove
that they were the Guti, Catti, or Getai of Asia Minor.
PLATE XXI (Not reproduced here - Keith Hunt)
Hebrew-Phoenician inscription found on a tombstone in an
Israelitish cemetery in the Crimea of the year 15 B.C, reading:
"This is the tombstone of Buki, the son of Itchak the priest; may
his rest be in Eden, at the time of the salvation of Israel. In
the year 702 of the years of our exile."
Mr.H.Bradley in his work, "The Goths," writes: "More than
300 years before the birth of Christ a traveller from the Greek
colony of Marseilles, named Pytheas, made known to the civilized
world the existence of a people called Guttones ... who traded
in the amber that was gathered on the Baltic shores." "For four
whole centuries, these amber merchants were heard of no more.
Then the elder Pliny,
.........................
To be continued
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